All posts by John Hughes

LS32

Day 30

Day 30 covers all of Chapter 26, Dhāraṇīs

Day 30 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered World-Holding Heavenly-King’s spells, we meet the rākṣasas and the Mother of Devils.

There are rākṣasas called 1. Lambā, 2. Vilambā, 3. Crooked-Teeth, 4. Flower-Teeth, 5. Black-Teeth, 6. Many-Hairs, 7. Insatiable, 8. Necklace-Holding, 9. Kuntī, and 10. Plunderer-Of-Energy-Of-All-Beings. These ten rākṣasas [and their attendants] came to the Buddha, together with Mother-Of-Devils and her children and attendants. They said to the Buddha simultaneously:

“World-Honored One! We also will protect the person who reads, recites and keeps the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma so that he may have no trouble. No one shall take advantage of the weak points of this teacher of the Dharma.”

Then they uttered spells before the Buddha:

“Ideibi (1), ideibin (2), ideibi (3), adeibi ( 4), ideibi (5), deibi (6), deibi (7), deibi (8), deibi (9), deibi (10), rokei (11), rokei (12), rokei (13), rokei (14), takei (15), takei (16), takei (17), tokei (18), tokei (19).”

[They said to the Buddha:]

“Anyone may step on our heads, but shall not trouble this teacher of the Dharma. Neither shall any yakṣa, rākṣasa, hungry spirit, pūtana, kṛtya, vetāda, kumbhāṇḍa, umāraka, apasmāraka, yakṣa-kṛtya or human kṛtya. Neither shall anyone who causes others to suffer from a fever for a day, two days, three days, four days, seven days or forever. Neither shall anyone who takes the shape of a man, a woman, a boy or a girl and appears in his dream.”

The Daily Dharma from July 18, 2023, offers this:

These ten rākṣasīs [and their attendants] came to the Buddha, together with Mother-Of-Devils and her children and attendants. They said to the Buddha simultaneously: “World-Honored One! We also will protect the person who reads, recites and keeps the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma so that he may have no trouble. No one shall take advantage of the weak points of this teacher of the Dharma.”

These fierce demons make this promise to the Buddha in Chapter Twenty-Six of the Lotus Sūtra. Mother-of-Devils, also known as Kishimojin, was once a demon who stole and ate human children, until the Buddha reminded her that humans loved their children in the same way she loved her own. The Buddha does not judge or condemn any being. Instead he uses his insight to transform our understanding to see the harm we create in the world through satisfying our selfish desires. When we work for the benefit of all beings, we find all beings working for our benefit also.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

mappō, Nattier Decline

Once upon a Future Time: The Latter Time

Whatever mo-shih (that is, Paścimakāle) may have meant in these texts, it was clearly not a third period occurring after an era of hsiang-fa.

We must return, therefore, to the contexts in which this expression is used to determine its original meaning. Here our task is made easier by the fact that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the context is quite consistent: the term occurs in the context of a discussion of the merit to be derived from the acceptance, maintenance, and distribution of a given sūtra—that is, the sūtra in which the passage in question appears. A typical example is found in one of the earliest Mahāyāna scriptures, the Lotus Sūtra:

One should always reverentially salute him with joined hands, as if he were the Chief of Jinas or the Self-born, he who in the fearful latter time (Skt. Paścimakāle [sic]) upholds this sūtra [i.e., the Lotus Sūtra of the Extinct [Buddha].

Those who accept the legitimacy of the Lotus Sūtra and uphold its teachings after the death of the Buddha, in other words, are worthy of the reverence of the world.

Once Upon A Future Time, p106-107
Daily Dharma, d18b

Daily Dharma – Jan. 7, 2024

A bhikṣu who expounds this Sūtra
Of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
With patience
After my extinction,
Will be emancipated
From jealousy, anger, and other illusions,
That is to say, from all obstacles.

The Buddha sings these verses to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva in Chapter Fourteen of the Lotus Sūtra in which he describes the peaceful practices of a Bodhisattva. We may realize that jealousy and anger are not desirable states, but only because what these states do to our moods. No matter how justified we may feel in our jealousy or anger, these are not pleasant states to be in or even to be around. The Buddha reminds us that the real problem with these states is that they keep us from seeing things as they are. Jealousy exaggerates the importance of what we want but do not have. Anger exaggerates the bad qualities of the targets of our anger. When we focus on this wonderful teaching, develop our patience, and remain determined to benefit all beings, we see things for what they are, and are liberated from illusions.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

LS32

Day 29

Day 29 covers all of Chapter 25, The Universal Gate of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva.

Day 29 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered Endless-Intent Bodhisattva’s question, we consider the benefits of calling World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva’s name.

“If anyone calls the name of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva when he is about to be killed, the sword or stick raised against him will suddenly break asunder, and he will be saved. If as many yakṣas and rākṣasas as to fill one thousand million Sumeru worlds hear a person call the name of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva when they come to him with the intention of killing him, those devils will not be able even to see him with their malicious eyes, and needless to say, kill him. If anyone, guilty or not, calls the name of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva when he is bound up in manacles, fetters, pillories or chains, those things [in which he is bound up] will break asunder, and he will be saved. Suppose the chief of a party of merchants is leading his party carrying invaluable treasures along a dangerous road haunted by as many bandits as to fill one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, and suppose one of the members of the party says [to others], ‘Good men! Do not be afraid! Call the name of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva with all your hearts! This Bodhisattva gives fearlessness to all living beings. If you call his name, you will be saved from [the attacks of] these bandits.’ If the other members of the party hear this and say simultaneously, ‘Namas to World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva,’ all of them will be saved because of their calling of his name. Endless-Intent! The supernatural powers of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva-mahāsattva are as great as previously stated.

“Those who have much lust will be saved from lust if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him. Those who have much anger will be saved from anger if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him. Those who have much stupidity will be saved from stupidity if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him. Endless-Intent! World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva has these great supernatural powers. He gives many benefits to all living beings. Therefore, they should constantly think of him.

The Daily Dharma from July 31, 2023, offers this:

Those who have much lust will be saved from lust if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him. Those who have much anger will be saved from anger if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him. Those who have much stupidity will be saved from stupidity if they constantly think of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva and respect him.

The Buddha gives this description of World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva (Kannon, Kanzeon, Avalokitesvara) to Endless-Intent Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Five of the Lotus Sūtra. World-Voice-Perceiver is the embodiment of compassion for all beings, the wish that all beings be freed from suffering and realize the enlightenment of the Buddha. This compassion is the antidote to the three poisons of lust, anger and stupidity. By aspiring to the example of World-Voice-Perceiver and awakening our own compassion, we can overcome these poisons and bring benefits to all beings.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

mappō, Nattier Decline

Once upon a Future Time: An Apocryphal Word

When we combine this chronological information with the fact that in a significant number of cases Ch. mo-fa corresponds to Skt. Paścimakāle (i.e., to an expression that is more regularly translated into Chinese as mo-shih), we may find the key to our puzzle: namely, that mo-fa originated simply was a variant of mo-shih, introduced by a Chinese writer already familiar with the periodization scheme built on sequential eras of cheng-fa and hsiang-fa, respectively. Viewed in this context it would have required only a small leap of inference to conclude that mo-shih (which implies, unlike its Sanskrit counterpart, not merely a “latter” but a final period) was meant as a reference to a discrete third period in the history of the Dharma, which could be expressed more clearly (or at least more symmetrically) by the term mo-fa. Once mo-fa had gained some currency—a process that must have been stimulated by the use of the term in some of the translations of Kumārajīva, whose works are among the most influential ever produced in China—the die was cast, and it fell to the lot of Chinese Buddhist scholastic writers to expound on the nature and duration of this supposed third period. In light of this scenario, it should no longer surprise us that the first extended discussion of the three-period time scheme appears well after the introduction of the term mo-fa in the works of Kumārajīva and others, and that such discussions appear not in translated sūtras, but in the works of Chinese commentators themselves.

If this line of reasoning is correct we should no longer view the term mo-fa as a Chinese translation of an Indian Buddhist term, but rather as a stylistic variant of mo-shih (itself a genuine translation of Skt. Paścimakāle …). The term mo-fa subsequently took on a life of its own, stimulating seemingly endless commentarial reflections in East Asia. Mo-fa is thus a Chinese “apocryphal word”: a term created in China, with no identifiable Indian antecedent.

Once Upon A Future Time, p102-103
Daily Dharma, d31b

Daily Dharma – Jan. 6, 2024

The two sons, Pure-Store and Pure-Eyes, came to their mother, joined their ten fingers and palms together, and said, ‘Mother! Go to Cloud Thunderpeal-Star-King-Flower-Wisdom Buddha! We also will go to attend on him, approach him, make offerings to him, and bow to him because he is expounding the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma to all gods and men.

The Buddha tells the story of King Wonderful-Adornment in Chapter Twenty-Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. The two sons chose to be born at a time when Cloud-Thunderpeal-Star-King-Flower-Wisdom Buddha was alive and led their parents to follow that Buddha and learn the Wonderful Dharma from him. They overcame their father’s attachment to wrong views, not by arguing against those views, but by demonstrating the wonders that come from the Buddha’s great teaching. This shows how when we as Bodhisattvas live this difficult teaching we lead others to it.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

Blog, mappō, Nattier Decline

Side Benefit of Working on a New Year’s Resolution

As I announced at the start of the year, I am going to attempt to divide the Lotus Sutra into 365 roughly equal parts and pair each day with one of Shinkyo Warner’s Daily Dharma or an appropriate quote from one of the books I’ve read. Next year I’ll publish those daily.

To that end I’ve gathered the text of Senchu Murano’s Lotus Sutra from the 32 Days of the Lotus Sutra files into a single document.

This is now available at 500yojanas.org/lotus-sutra/book/

Beyond my needs, this will provide a place where you can search the entire Lotus Sutra in your browser.

For example, considering Jan Nattier’s discussion of “Counterfeit vs. Semblance” as the English word to describe the age after the parinirvāṇa of a Buddha, we find Murano’s translation uses “counterfeit” 19 times in both prose and gāthās when describing the predictions of future Buddhahood for various  disciples and when describing  the Buddha called Powerful-Voice-King in Chapter 20, Never-Despising Bodhisattva. Semblance is not used in Murano’s Lotus Sutra.

Considering Nattier’s discussion of the Final Dharma, we find hints of this when the Buddha mentions the “latter days after [my extinction]” four times in Chapter 14, Peaceful Practices. Countering that, however, we have Chapter 11: Beholding the Stupa of Treasures, in which the Buddha notes the efforts of Buddhas to “have the Dharma preserved forever” and then asks his sons to “Make a great vow / To preserve the Dharma forever!”

Murano’s translation contains 83,817 words, which includes the titles and the declarations at the end of each volume. Dividing that by 365 gives you something short of 230 words per day. That’s a really small block of text. This blog post has 295 words when you reach the period at the end of this sentence. I may want to rethink this project.

LS32

Day 28

Day 28 covers all of Chapter 24, Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva, and concludes the Seventh Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

Day 28 Text with annotationsPlay MP3

Having last month considered the reaction in the Sahā-World to Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva’s samadhi, we consider the arrival of Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva.

Thereupon Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva, accompanied by eighty-four thousand Bodhisattvas, left his world [for the Sahā World]. As they passed through the [one hundred and eight billion nayuta] worlds, the ground of those worlds quaked in the six ways; lotus flowers of the seven treasures rained [on those worlds], and hundreds of thousands of heavenly drums sounded [over those worlds] although no one beat them. The eyes of [Wonderful-Voice] Bodhisattva were as large as the leaves of the blue lotus. His face was more handsome than the combination of thousands of millions of moons. His body was golden-colored, and adorned with many hundreds of thousands of mark of merits. His power and virtue were great. His light was brilliant. His body had all the characteristics of the muscular body of Narayana.

[Before he started,] he stepped on a platform of the seven treasures. The platform went up to the sky seven times as high as the tala[-tree, and moved through the sky, carrying him]. Together with the Bodhisattvas surrounding him respectfully, he came to Mt. Gṛdhrakūṭa of this Sahā-World, and descended from the platform of the seven treasures. He came to Śākyamuni Buddha, carrying with him a necklace worth hundreds of thousands. He worshipped the feet of the Buddha with his head, offered the necklace to the Buddha, and said to him:

“World-Honored One! I bring you a message from Pure-Flower-Star-King-Wisdom Buddha. [He wishes to say this.] Are you in good health? Are you happy and peaceful or not? Are the four elements of your body working in harmony or not? Are the worldly affairs bearable or not? Are the living beings easy to save or not? Do they not have much greed, anger, ignorance, jealousy, stinginess and arrogance, or do they? Are they not undutiful to their parents, or are they? Are they not di respectful to śramaṇas, or are they? Do they not have wrong views, or do they? Are they not evil, or are they? Do they not fail to control their five desires, or do they? World-Honored One! Did they defeat the Maras, who are their enemies, or not. Is Many-Treasures Tathāgata, who passed away a long time ago and has now come here riding in the stupa of the seven treasures, hearing the Dharma or not? [Pure-Flower-Star-King-Wisdom Buddha] also wishes to know whether Many-Treasures Tathāgata is peaceful and healthy, and able to stay long or not World-Honored One! Now I wish to see Many-Treasures Buddha World-Honored One! Show him to me!”

Thereupon Śākyamuni Buddha said to Many-Treasure Buddha, “This Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva wishes to see you.”

Thereupon Many-Treasures Buddha said to Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva:

Excellent, excellent! You have come here to make offerings to Śākyamuni Buddha, hear the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, and see Mañjuśrī and others.”

The Daily Dharma from April 1, 2023, offers this:

World-Honored One! I bring you a message from Pure-Flower-Star-King-Wisdom Buddha. [He wishes to say this.] Are you in good health? Are you happy and peaceful or not? Are the four elements of your body working in harmony or not? Are the worldly affairs bearable or not? Are the living beings easy to save or not? Do they not have much greed, anger, ignorance, jealousy, stinginess and arrogance, or do they? Are they not undutiful to their parents, or are they? Are they not disrespectful to śramaṇas, or are they? Do they not have wrong views, or do they? Are they not evil, or are they? Do they not fail to control their five desires, or do they?

The passage above is how Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva greets Śākyamuni Buddha in Chapter Twenty-Four of the Lotus Sūtra. This Bodhisattva asks not only about the Buddha, but about those whom the Buddha benefits with his teaching. The Buddha answers that those he teaches have prepared through innumerable lives to receive his wisdom. The questions of Wonderful-Voice show how we obscure the teaching through our delusion and attachments.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com

mappō, Nattier Decline

Once upon a Future Time: The Final Dharma

If we have had little difficulty in locating examples of the use of the term saddharma-pratirūpaka (and of the two-part timetable with which it eventually came to be associated) in Buddhist scriptures composed in India, matters are altogether different when we come to the third dispensation in the history of the Buddhist religion, known in East Asian sources as mo-fa (Jpn. mappō). Though the term itself appears in a number of sūtras translated into Chinese from Indian originals, it is not at all clear what Sanskrit Buddhist term —if any—can properly be described as its antecedent. Moreover, though the idea of a three-part timetable of cheng-fa, hsiang-fa, and mo-fa is so ubiquitous in East Asian Buddhist writings that much of the history of Buddhism in this region would be incomprehensible without it, it has proved singularly difficult to find examples of such a three-part scenario in any Buddhist source of certifiably Indian origin.

Once Upon A Future Time, p90

If mo-fa cannot be viewed simply as a translation of a well-known Sanskrit technical term, we must turn directly to the Chinese Buddhist literature in our attempt to determine its significance. Restricting our inquiry at this point to those texts translated from Indian originals (both in order to focus on the point of entry of the term into Chinese Buddhist usage and to continue our attempt to establish its proper Indian antecedent, if any), we will begin by tabulating the occurrences of the term in the first seventeen volumes of the Taishō canon —that is, in the Agama, Avadāna, and Mahāyāna sūtra literature. …

In sharp contrast to what we might expect, the above list shows not a multitude of texts in which hsiang-fa and mo-fa appear in conjunction, but quite the opposite. With only a handful of exceptions … either hsiang-fa or mo-fa may appear in a given text, but not both.

Once Upon A Future Time, p95-97

[W]e should also take note of another important fact: that is, that in the entirety of the first seventeen volumes of the Taishō canon, comprising 847 separate scriptures and totaling over 16,000 pages of printed text (that is, approximately 25,296,000 Chinese characters), only 22 individual works containing the term mo-fa are registered in the Taishō index. Moreover, in virtually all of these cases the term appears only once in a given text, rather than being used repeatedly and serving as a major topic of discussion in its own right. While there are undoubtedly other occurrences of the term that have escaped the notice of the indexers, the overall trend is quite clear: this expression is as rare in the canonical sūtra literature as it is ubiquitous in the East Asian commentaries.

Once Upon A Future Time, p98
Daily Dharma, WONS

Daily Dharma – Jan. 5, 2024

Those who believe in the Lotus Sutra are like the winter season, for many hardships come incessantly. Winter is surely followed by spring. We have never heard or seen that winter returns to fall. We have never heard that the believers in the Lotus Sutra go back to become ordinary men. The Lotus Sutra says, “All people who listen to this Sutra will attain Buddhahood.”

Nichiren wrote this in his Letter to the Nun Myoichi (Myoichi Ama Gozen Gohenji). Nichiren suffered through many hardships in his life, including exile, banishment from his family and home province, being placed on the execution mat, and having his home at Matsubagayatsu burned by members of the Pure Land sect. Through all these difficulties, Nichiren kept his faith in the Buddha’s wisdom and fulfilled his mission to benefit all beings in this world of conflict by leading them with the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren’s faith and practice inspire our faith and practice. Whatever obstacles we may face, we progress towards enlightenment under the guidance of the Ever-Present Buddha.

The Daily Dharma is produced by the Lexington Nichiren Buddhist Community. To subscribe to the daily emails, visit zenzaizenzai.com